This highlights another problem - we can't really tell by looking at something like a kettle whether it is likely to last or not. A higher price doesn't often mean abetter product, particularly when the item bears a so-called "celebrity" or even worse "designer" label.
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Hardly an activity I would advocate!! However, if you wanted more to 'happen', you could try adding a pinch of salt (or almost anything else which dissolves)!
Kind Regards, John
I just did it with normal (soft water here) tap water and copper wire. It boiled fast but copper is not good for the electrodes as it turned the water a horrid green/black colour!
Did you really mean "doesn't often mean ....", rather than "often doesn't mean"? I certainly agree with the latter. Indeed, as I've said, with some products (irons & watches to name but two) my personal anecdotal experiences are the other way around - much lower-priced ones seems to last longer!
Perhaps more to the point, when one product cost 5 times more than a cheaper alternative, it is extremely unlikley that it will last five times as long - but, even if it did, one could buy 5 of the cheaper ones and still be no worse off. That's always been my approach with electronics, including computers. A cheapo product will generally give at least 5 or so year's service, and then (technological advances being what they are) I can buy one with a much better spec. for a similar (or lower!) price than teh original. Even if the one which costs 5 time more would last for 25 years, who would want to be using a 25 years out-of-date computer or whatever?
Kind Regards, John
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I have a vague memory of conducting a similar experiment years ago. As best as I can remember now, my electrodes were just a couple of stripped lengths of 2.5 sq. mm copper cable, probably about 3 or 4 inches in length and held in a beaker of water an inch or two apart. I remember by the time I'd finished adding salt, the current (240V AC applied) was getting up somewhere around 10A.
Because doesn't the differing materials affect the electrode potential. Been a long time since I was at school, but this may help: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/redox/faq/different-metals-different-voltages.shtml Although I could and am likely completely off track and may be thinking about power generating sources like Lead acid batteries.
Yes, you're a fair way off-track - what you are doing today has not really got anything much to do with electrochemical reactions - you're simply passing an electric current (from an external supply) through the resistance/impedance represented by the water (well, a dilute solution of electrolytes).
Whilst, for your present purpose, it doesn't matter whether the electrodes are of the same or different materials, you'd do much better with something (like gold or platinum) which, unlike copper, was sufficiently inert not to get involved in reactions and/or develop surface coatings.
Kind Regards, John
I just did it again with stainless steel spoons and the result was much cleaner this time!
Yes, I should have mentioned stainless steel (a lot cheaper than gold or platinum
), which ought not to be too bad.Kind Regards, John
Really?
...Only joking of course, I would not even advocate it myself! I ensure you I was isolated from mains earth when I was conducting my experiment.I take it this is not how you like your brew of tea then?
Is it copper oxide in the water??Doh! - That makes sense, I did notice that I was only drawing 20 watts of power and that the half inch of copper exposed on each wire quickly oxidised. I live in a very hard water area, and had very little copper exposed in my tests. I knew that impedance through the water should generate the heat in principle, just I dumbly wondered if electrolysis and electrochemical reactions would have had any part to play as well.
On a more serious note, portable domestic electrode boilers should be illegal, but we can debate that till the cows come home.
Dunno about the copper oxide. But have a vid of the spoon one.
A deficiency which we cannot afford to remedy.
OTOH, the prospect of financial ruin and decades in prison would, I promise you, focus the minds of the people who run eBay etc and make the laws self-policing.
A very poor example.
Consider, instead, a 25-year old cooker, or washing machine, or tumble drier, or FM radio, or torch, or kettle....
Basically consider anything which does not truly go out-of-date. NOTE - the efforts of marketing departments to convince consumers that a product with styling from a few years ago, or lacking new triumph-of-marketing-solutions over non-existent-engineering-problems do not make things truly out-of-date.
Yes, but that's not going to happen, no matter how much you would like it to. Many a murderer does not even spend one decade, let alone 'decades', in prison.
... and if you could find a way to stop likes of eBay and Amazon from acting as intermediaries in selling these products, the producers of iffy products would find other ways of selling them which might well be even more difficult to police.
Kind Regards, John
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